L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 10 THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2019 L'Italo-Americano KENNETH SCAMBRAY A s t h e b a c k c o v e r tells us, dead reck- oning is a nautical term used to deter- mine the direction and distance a ship travels with- out instrumentation. So it is that the two authors of Dead Reck- o n i n g , A n d r e i G u r u i a n u a n d Anthony Di Renzo, are deter- mining by their own instincts and insights, without the usual aid of scholarly apparatus of ref- erences and footnotes, the direc- tion that western civilization is headed, to disaster or to recov- ery and possible renaissance. R o m a n i a n A m e r i c a n p o e t Guruianu teaches writing at New York University and has pub- lished two books of poems. Di Renzo is an associate professor of writing at Ithaca College and a l s o h a s s e v e r a l p u b l i s h e d books. Most recently I reviewed i n t h i s c o l u m n h i s n o v e l , Trinàcria: A Tale of Bourbon Sicily. Readers of L'Italo-Amer- i c a n o a l s o k n o w h i m a s t h e w r i t e r o f t h e c o l u m n L e Pasquinate, where he poses as the secretary of the fictional Pasquino in his always enter- taining meditations on the histo- ry of Italy and the Eternal City. Dead Reckoning is a medita- tion on the power and money that both authors feel has direct- ed the course of the history of Europe and America. As the authors' European heritage tells u s , A m e r i c a a n d E u r o p e a r e linked by the traditions and the people we share. The book is divided into ten different sections. I won't say chapters because that would g i v e t h e r e a d e r t h e w r o n g impression: this is not a conven- tional work. In fact, the reader is at liberty to start reading any- where in the book. Skip around, go to the back, the front, then the middle. Each short piece by Guruianu and Di Renzo pro- vides enlightening comments on history and society. For both authors, memory plays a large role in their personal lives and their view of history, as they insert themselves, at least their conscious selves, into the histor- ical process. Over the last centu- ry and its multiplicity of wars, I and II not the least of them, western culture has betrayed itself, its values, and its commit- ments to its people. Neverthe- less, this work by dead reckon- ing attempts to find a way out of such a problematic and some- times dismal history. To set the tone in the open- ing note to the reader, using travel and by implication immi- g r a t i o n a s h i s m e t a p h o r , Guruianu writes, "Hope filled o u r s a i l s . W e t r a v e l e d e v e r westward to the New Atlantis of America." Regardless of the shoals that Guruianu sees in w a t e r s s u r r o u n d i n g h i m , h e a l w a y s e x p r e s s e s a s e n s e o f hope. Guiding him, as well as the reader, memory becomes his and our blueprint. As travelers, both Guruianu and Di Renzo are exiles always looking for that safe refuge, "a physical sanctu- ary" from the ruins left behind by war, dictatorships, power, and money. G u r u i a n u i s m e d i t a t i v e , introspective, concerned with what he calls the "propaganda of the self," which must "break with the solemn circus," and d i c t a t e s t h e i n d i v i d u a l ' s thoughts and direction. His per- sona struggles against the "mis- guided tedium that covers all like an umbrella." As a Romanian American, Guruianu meditates on the fail- ure of Romanian communism, specifically under the corrupt and disastrous regime of Nico- lae Ceausescu. Early in his sec- tions he refers to wholesale cor- ruption of an ideal, where the i d e a l i s m o f a m o v e m e n t i s debased by the $20 sale of T- shirts inscribed with the slogan, Workers, Unite! These move- ments, he laments, fragment and break into pieces of identity pol- itics, which separate and divide people rather than unite them. In an effort to rescue western cu ltu r e an d th e s elf f r o m its headlong voyage into a new dis- aster, he goes on to reflect on philosophers, poets, novelists, s o c i a l c r i t i c s , a n d d i c t a t o r s . Early in the work, he entitles one short paragraph, "Because We Are Meant to Be Forgotten," where history threatens to con- demn the self to "imitation." If history is a palimpsest, as he implies later in his sections, we hope that it is not overwritten with the same misguided, histor- ical narrative. He holds out that there is still hope for change in the exiled self's journey for self- discovery. Di Renzo strikes expounds on similar themes in his alternating sections. He announces early in a section entitled "Laughing in the Ruins," quoting Milan Kun- dera, that "The struggle of man against power . . . is the struggle of memory against forgetting." This can as well be used as a theme for the entire work. In his pieces, Di Renzo meditates on history, politics, and culture. In the process, he discusses the likes of Alessandro Manzoni and Giuseppe Mazzini, Luigi Piran- dello, Benito Mussolini, and Sil- vio Berlusconi. T h i s s h o r t l i s t o f n a m e s shows the presence of a real struggle over time, both good and bad, from Italians' nine- teenth-century hope for a uni- fied, democratic Italy, to its total collapse into dictatorship in the twentieth century. Di Renzo writes about Euro- p e a n i d e n t i t y i n A m e r i c a . Among others, he writes about Andy Warhol, a devout Catholic whose real name is Anrej Varho- la, whose parents were from a town once in Hungary, now in Slovakia. He also recounts Ezra Pound's Rome radio broadcasts in support of Mussolini during World War II. Pound's later incarceration, narrowly escaping the death penalty for treason, is a lesson for those who were hood- winked by ideology. In the section History, Open for Business, he follows the theme of power and money and how even idealistic revolutions a r e c o r r u p t e d b y t h e m . H e recounts scenes from Venice, how contemporary Venetians are abandoning the beautiful lagoon c i t y t o t h e " t w e n t y m i l l i o n tourists" that, like the lagoon's rising tides, flood the city each year. The tourist industry and money have been driving its res- idents to higher ground. His short sections on Italian history and life are narratives with characters who speak in their own voices. In one section, Bread and Circuses, he wanders from the cost of the Coliseum's recent restoration back to its use — and that of the Circus Max- i m u s — a s a s i t e f o r R o m a n spectacles. In any era, Di Renzo sees the exercise of power and money. For a way out of such dilem- mas he turns to Nietzsche, who once lived in Turin, the home of "Fiat, Lavazza, Olivetti," unlike Nietzsche a "model of efficiency and rationality." As he writes in his Italian home, "Nietzsche senses impending disintegra- tion" of western values. But even the great philosopher does not prove a way out of the influ- ence of power and money. At the end of his sections, Di R e n z o h a r k e n s b a c k t o t h e Risorgimento and its dream of a common language to unify Italy. In the Betrothed, Di Renzo tells us, Manzoni "midwifed the birth of Italy," in an effort to link the dialect speaking regions of the South to the rest of the country. In the end, a common under- standing is what both Guruianu and Di Renzo are searching for in their fragments. There is no system or ideology that links these sections. In their judge- ment, that would be fatal to their cause, as it was to Pound and other historical figures. They write because hope is not lost. As they demonstrate we still have history, memory, and rea- son, if we search for it. I am reminded of what the American poet T. S. Eliot said at the end of his poem The Wasteland, which applies so well to Guruianu and Di Renzo's Dead Reckoning: "these fragments I have shored against my ruins." Dead Reckoning: Transatlantic Passages on Europe & America. By Andrei Guruianu & Anthony Di Renzo LIFE PEOPLE MOVIES MUSIC BOOKS

• Cover